PC Matic is the collection of all of PC Pitstop's technologies under one hood and one integrated architecture. This includes our world renowned OverDrive scanning technology with well over 200 million scans under its belt since we opened our doors in 2000. PC Matic blocks execution of any program that isn't on its whitelist, which includes all types of malware. It has a great price per device, but you'll have to put up with it occasionally blocking.

• Pros

  Whitelist-based antivirus blocks all types of malware. Blocked all samples in our testing. Inexpensive.

• Cons

  Whitelist-based antivirus also blocks valid programs. Many false positives in independent lab tests. Few results from testing labs. Full malware scan missed most samples.

• Bottom Line

  PC Matic blocks execution of any program that isn't on its whitelist, which includes all types of malware. It has a great price per device, but you'll have to put up with it occasionally blocking valid programs, too.

I could write an antivirus utility guaranteed to block execution of every single piece of malware, be it a virus, Trojan, ransomware, spyware, or any other nefarious ilk. You'd just have to put up with the fact that it blocks every good program as well. Crazy? Not completely. To make it practical, I would just need to add a comprehensive whitelist of known good programs, and be ready to quickly analyze any unknowns that show up. Indeed, that's just how PC Pitstop PC Matic 3.0 works. It does what it promises—it blocks execution for any program not on its whitelist. Whether it suits you depends on your tolerance for false positives, or the blocking of valid programs.

• $39.99
• $59.99
• $59.99
• $39.99
• $39.95
• $39.99
• $69.00
• $39.95
• $39.99
• $39.99
• $58.99
• $0.00
• $0.00
• $0.00
• $59.99

You can install the program and run a scan for free. In addition to scanning for malware, PC Matic looks for issues regarding your PC's maintenance, stability, and performance. Of course, if you want it to take any action based on the scan, you must pay up, but the price isn't bad. A $50-per-year subscription gets you five licenses; you can also pay $150 to keep those five licenses for a lifetime. More than half of the premium antivirus products I track cost roughly $40 per year for a single license. That group includes Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2017, Kaspersky, Norton, and Webroot.

McAfee AntiVirus Plus is an exception to that common pricing scheme. You pay $59.99 per year for a McAfee subscription, but you get unlimited licenses. You can install McAfee protection on every single Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows device you own.

PC Matic's main window used to be a bit overwhelming, with tons of colorful icons, some representing your protected computers, others representing recent maintenance statistics. The current edition, version 3.0, is significantly toned down. The computer icons no longer attempt a 3D look, the maintenance stats panel only appears if you choose to open it, and the maintenance icons themselves display in just a few muted hues. Overall, it's a more professional look.

Website and Promotion

You've probably seen ads for PC Matic on TV. They've grown more professional over time—for example, they no longer claim that computer viruses are written by 'Boris RipYouOff.' Both the ads and the company's website celebrate the fact that the company is entirely based in the US. The website also states that 'All of our competitors outsource some piece of their product; whether it is research, development, support or all three.' I wouldn't swear that's true of all competing products, but I don't have contradictory evidence. Perhaps a competitor whose business is entirely US-based will let me know.

The site also promotes whitelisting as the best solution to blocking malware, suggesting that other antivirus products work by attempting to blacklist every malicious program. That just isn't the case. The site likens blacklisting to making a list of everyone who's not allowed to come in your front door; how much easier to just make a list of everyone who is permitted in! But other products don't actually rely solely on a blacklist. Oh, they naturally bar known criminals, but they put even more emphasis on detecting criminal behavior. That guy skulking in the bushes? The one with a ski mask on, and hands in his pockets? I've never seen him before, but don't let him in!

Whitelisting definitely has value, but it also tends to block access for perfectly legitimate programs, or people. When your long-lost cousin suddenly appears on your doorstep, will you turn her away because she's not on the list?

Little Help From the Labs

I look to five independent antivirus testing labs around the world for reports on their extensive testing of security products. If all five labs include a product in their testing, and all five give it top scores, you can be pretty sure the product is worthwhile. Bitdefender and Kaspersky Anti-Virus stand out in exactly that way.

Because PC Matic blocks execution of every unknown program, it can achieve very high protection rates in testing. In the latest RAP (Reactive And Proactive) test from Virus Bulletin, PC Matic scored a perfect 100 percent. However, if you look at the product's test history online, you'll see that while its RAP scores are high, it failed the VB100 test over and over. In addition, Virus Bulletin found it to be buggy in the last three tests.

My contact at PC Pitstop accurately pointed out that a product that blocks even a single valid program fails the VB100 test. 'We would rather take one false positive and fail the test,' he said, 'than to allow one false negative, and cause an infection on our customers' machines.' He also noted that the stability tests that found PC Matic to be buggy related to the previous edition, and that the stability issues have been resolved in the current version, reviewed here.

That said, PC Matic didn't fail the VB100 test by just 'one false positive.' In many cases, it blocked hundreds of valid programs. The same held true in a test by AV-Comparatives that PC Pitstop commissioned. While PC Matic achieved a perfect malware-blocking score, it also blocked over 800 valid programs. To put that in perspective, the second-highest number of false positives was just 12, by Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus. Most of the tested products didn't exhibit any false positive detections at all.

For the purpose of aggregating a lab score, I only consider public tests, not commissioned ones. I don't have enough data to gin up an aggregate score for PC Matic. My contact indicates that PC Pitstop aims to get PC Matic included in those public tests—I look forward to seeing those results.

Blocking Malware (and Everything Else)

When I tried launching my collection of malware samples, PC Matic blocked every single one from running. Note that this does not mean it identified them as malware; it just did not find them on its whitelist. Checking the Super Shield report, I found 18 percent flagged as known bad, 54 percent unknown, and 11 percent good (but blocked even so). Another 18 percent just didn't turn up in the report, at least not under the name I expected. PC Matic blocked 100 percent of the samples, but not by actually detecting them as malicious—hence the asterisk by its score in my malware blocking chart.

According to the PC Pitstop website, when PC Matic encounters an unknown program, it submits that program for analysis. Results should be available within 24 hours; my company contact says it's typically more like one to four hours. And indeed, when I tried a day later to launch the samples, all those previously listed as unknown, or known good, had changed to known bad.

Tested with the same set of samples, Emsisoft Anti-Malware 2017 actively detected every single one as malware of one type or another. Webroot and several others managed the same feat with my previous sample collection.

PC Matic does install an ad blocker in your browsers, but there's no component to detect and avert malware-hosting URLs or phishing URLs. To run my malicious URL blocking test, I had to change some Super Shield settings. First, I set it to scan files on access, so that it would scan any downloaded files immediately. It warned that doing so could cause the PC to run more slowly, and that fully enabling this feature requires a reboot. After rebooting, I set it to prompt me upon discovering an unknown program, rather than just blocking it.

That last change proved necessary just to get the test started, as PC Matic wanted to block the utility program I use for the malicious URL blocking test. For every single malware-hosting URL, PC Matic popped up a warning stating that the malware payload was not known to be a good file. I clicked Always Block every time, and it blocked every executable payload.

Here again, though, PC Matic didn't identify any bad files. It just reported that the files weren't known to be good. A brand-new game or utility program, too new for the whitelist, would have gotten just the same treatment. In fact, during my testing PC Matic warned about an essential Windows component, and about Adobe's automatic updater.

Challenged in the same way, Symantec Norton AntiVirus Basic actively blocked 98 percent of the malware downloads, some by steering the browser away from the dangerous URL, some by identifying and eliminating the malware payload.

Full Scan Confusion

A full scan with PC Matic took well over an hour and quarantined 15 high-security threats. That's longer than the current average, which is about 45 minutes. A second scan didn't go any faster.

To quarantine a file, PC Matic simply appends the extension PCPQUAR to the filename. Well over a year ago, my company contact told me that the developers were working on a more robust quarantine system. That system hasn't yet arrived, clearly.

As I mentioned, when I tried launching all of my samples a second time, I found that with the passage of a day, Super Shield now marked them all as known bad files. So why didn't the full scan, which occurred after that second test, find and remove them all? My PC Pitstop contact simply explained that the two components use 'different lists.'

One could go on to ask, if whitelisting is the perfect solution, why does the product scan for malware at all? And if the Super Shield component knows that a file is bad, why doesn't it share that information with the on-demand scan?

Other Avenues

PC Matic doesn't have the lock on whitelisting technology. Quite a few antivirus utilities maintain their own huge whitelists of programs that are known and safe, but most use it in conjunction with other technologies. For example, Norton quarantines any programs known to be malicious and leave programs on its whitelist alone. When a program falls in neither category—a true unknown—Norton ramps up its behavior monitoring on that program. At the first time of malicious activity, the antivirus steps in, halts the program, and puts it in quarantine.

VoodooSoft VoodooShield handles whitelisting a bit differently. It assumes you have a clean PC to start, and it whitelists your existing programs. When a never-seen program appears, it asks you what to do. If you were actively installing something new, you just let it continue. But if the message is unexpected, you block the activity. VoodooShield's ability to actively identify malware is growing, but for now it's meant as a supplement to your existing antivirus.

The Kure effectively whitelists your entire PC's current status. On every reboot, it returns to that clean starting point. Any malware that weasels onto the system gets eliminated as soon as you reboot. It's a rather extreme solution, and not one that I'd choose for myself. However, it can be perfect for situations like a public computer; just reboot between users.

Does What It Says

PC Matic 3.0 promises that it won't let any program run if it's not on the whitelist, and it delivers on that promise. It doesn't promise to identify bad programs, only programs that it doesn't recognize as good. As a result, you're almost certain to find that it suppresses some legitimate programs. Its lab tests bear out this tendency toward false positives. In some tests, it blocked many hundreds of legitimate programs.

If you're not bothered by the idea of dealing with false positives, you could give PC Matic a try. The price is certainly right; roughly a quarter the cost of most competing products on a per-device basis. As for me, I'll stick with mainstream antivirus tools that use blacklisting, whitelisting, behavior-based analysis, and all other available tools to eradicate malware without interfering with valid programs.

Of the many, many antivirus utilities available, we've identified five as Editors' Choice winners. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus and Kaspersky Anti-Virus consistently earn great scores from the independent labs. McAfee AntiVirus Plus doesn't score as high, but one subscription protects all your devices. Symantec Norton AntiVirus Basic includes some unusual and useful security features. And Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus, with its focus on detecting malware by its behavior, is the smallest and lightest antivirus you'll find.

Bottom Line: PC Matic blocks execution of any program that isn't on its whitelist, which includes all types of malware. It has a great price per device, but you'll have to put up with it occasionally blocking valid programs, too.

Pc Matic License Key Download

Pc Matic Download For Windows 7

Pc Matic Download Install